How easy is it for a man to convince others he is someone he is not, that he has led a secret life? Judge Zekes words for yourself, then read the real story -- "Mercenary," by Tom Junod.

Excerpts from an interview with William Clark, December 7, 2006, by Tom Junod.

ESQ: How'd you get the name "Zeke"?

ZEKE: Working with foreign nationals, they can't say the name bill on radio, Bill Clark, because it sounds funny to them. They can't pronounce it. Zeke, Zed. The last letter of the alphabet. It's a radio call sign. Zeke.

ESQ: You read about Blackwater, all these contractors seem to have nicknames. Are you Zeke?

ZEKE: Yes. Always Zeke. Always have been.

ESQ: What is your own code? Your own moral operative code? What will you and won't you do?

ZEKE: I won't involve civilians. I won't involve non-players. I have a real aversion to involving women and children. Even if they're on the dark side. That's my code. I won't... I don't accept collateral damage. To the point of not doing the operation. There's no acceptable wife or children being killed for the cause. [Pause] I won't lie to my mother. That sounds dumb but I won't lie to her. Can't. An embellishment of facts for my own self-aggrandizement -- those days are over. Because lies, like I told you before, they'll come out of the ground -- they'll catch you. Dumb. I'm getting too old to remember the lies, so I tell the truth and that way I don't have to remember the lies. I try to be as honest as I can. Because you don't gain anything by making yourself into a superhero. There's always going to be someone who -- Ah, I don't know -- can find chinks in the armor. But: women and children. They're off limits. That "Kill 'em all, let god sort it out" type of mentality you see that on t-shirts? It's all bullshit. You start hurting people who are innocent you'll pay a karma price for it somewhere.

ZEKE: Yes, and...I'm not a crusader, man. I'm just trying to be a decent guy. When you take on the role of operator, take on the role of special operations and put on the uniform and get the M-4, there's kind of an expectation of proficiency. People tend to see you as a machine, they tend to see you as a mindless redneck from Arkansas going out and killing people. That's the furthest thing from the truth, it really is. You're just as much flesh and blood as everybody else. But you have to fight that, , you have to fight that image. You have to say I'm not that way. I'm a sculptor. I write things. I have loves in my life, I have people I care about. I'm not that way, I'm not some syphilitic numnuts from rural nowhere who lives to hunt deer and drink beer. I'm not that kind of person. And I resent the fact you put me in that category, that kind of thing. You have to put them in their place. Because they'll box you in. Be very careful boxing people in, emotionally. Because you're frequently wrong. You never would have known that I do what I do, just from talking to me. The things I'm going through. Just people.

Shooters and marksmen, operators -- it's something that's not taught. It's something you're born with. It's the way a guy can throw a baseball better than anyone else. Throw a football. How do you teach that? It's a genetic thing. He's got an extra chromosome, something -- makes him that level of proficiency. Operations and shooting are the same way. There's a thing that makes them better. It's like talent. I can't describe it, but I know it when I see it. I have an affinity for it. Always have. What makes you that way? I don't know. Environment. Genetics. Something makes you seek out that stuff, because you're pretty good at it. And what I think is, you're pretty good at working at high levels of emotional stress. I was never worried about getting killed, dying, losing everything. Pretty much function like I am right now.

ESQ: You said from the very beginning that you were asked whether you could handle it. Well -- can you handle it?

ZEKE: I can handle it.

ESQ: But saying yes is something of a devil's bargain.

ZEKE: Shooting and all that stuff is a taught skill. But the emotional ability to handle that stress -- I don't know where it comes from. And I'm a nobody, I'm nothing special, I'm just a guy. But I've got a special way of handling that kind of overt, in your face life and death stress. To the point where it doesn't really rattle me. It scares me -- I get scared. And I get upset. I get excited. But I'm able to channel it into direct action as opposed to stopping and freezing, going into a fetal position and stuff. I'm able to act upon my training. I don't know where it comes from. Where that calmness comes from. It just is. God just gives me something: Okay, let's handle it. Some guys can throw a baseball, some guys can hit a golf ball, some guys can talk on the radio while they're getting shot at.

ESQ: But clearly your ability to handle it is not infinite.

ZEKE: You have to have the physical mental package. You have to be in exceedingly good physical condition because the adrenaline stress of that is exhausting. And if you do it for more than like weeks at a time you'll have pneumonia and fucking die. That's what I'm encountering now. My physical presence can't sustain the emotional need to do it. I can't stay up for 18 hours a day for weeks on end. I can't sleep two hours a night, living on coffee and MREs. I can't do that anymore. My physical body won't take it. My bowels will shut down, I'll get dysentery. You just get old. That's why special operations -- real special operations -- is a young man's sport. The average age of a navy seal is 23 years old.

ESQ: So why do you want to do it again?

ZEKE: It's in the blood. Why do old football players watch football games and want to play ball? Why do old boxers say, I could do that again. Special operations is not something you do; it's something you are. Sitting in the back of restaurants. Watching when you come out the door what's left and right. Who's behind you on the road, who's coming towards you, where's his hands? Is he looking at you too hard? Is he locked on to you? Are you being surveilled? What's that car in the rear-view mirror? How long has it been behind you? It's not paranoia. It's how you live your life. You've been to every shithole in the world trying to do a job that's been mandated. You have bad guys looking for you. You have guys trying to find you. You have guys as smart as you are or smarter trying to get you. It's just the game. That's the game. It's just something in the blood, and it's very very difficult to turn it off.

ZEKE: Not on purpose. We were run across. In other words, we were spotted, and something happens.

ESQ: So you didn't have Muhammad trying to hunt you down at the same time you were trying to hunt down Muhammad.

ZEKE: Never knew we were there. Good for me. Good for us. Very soft footprints. We had a very soft footprint on the land. Presence was very soft. Unarmored vehicles. One shot, move out. Good intel. Move at night. No overt driving around in Mamba units.

ESQ: So you weren't that typical Blackwater guy?

ZEKE: No, I'm not that young, not that tough. I'm not that fast anymore. I can't do that. I have to fight on my terms. I have to pick the battle on my terms. Play to your strength. I'm not a 20-year-old kid anymore. Ride around with a Molly Hatchet tape and a skull and crossbones. That's a, Come get me thing. If they come get me, they win.

ESQ: Were you quartered with Blackwater?

ZEKE: No.

ESQ: Where were you quartered.

ZEKE: Nah. [Explains that he can't say where he was quartered.] Because the guys who are doing what I'm doing, they're still there.

ESQ: What was your average day?

ZEKE: Every day we'd get up 6:30, seven o'clock and hit whatever exercise routine you had. Stretch, isometrics. Get chow, which is right there in the facility. Not much civilian contractors; we ate off the local economy. You get an intel brief off the computer -- satellite intel brief, or satellite secure form brief. They would ask you to go to a certain location, pick up certain material, which is intel -- what they call a warning order. They give you a warning order. Then you'd get your warning order, and there'd probably be a civ-pol guy there.

ESQ: Civ-Pol?

ZEKE: A briefer, an intel guy, and he'd brief you on the operation. Location, maps, coordinates; they'd give you as much detail as they had -- you find out how fresh it is. And you take it back to your house. And you define your operational format and, get your logistics set up, find out what your close air support is, if you have any, find out who's all in support of the operation, who's in the area, regular operations, find out your operations and that usually takes till two three four o'clock in the afternoon. Move into your forward area of operations, find your hive, get your hive set up. If it's a crossroads you're looking over or a building you're looking at. And plan on spending one or two days there, surveilling the area, watching the area, getting your range card, getting your card set up, the landmarks, getting your range estimations set up, checking the weather, wind indications, this kind of thing. And just staying hidden. Watching and watching and watching. Pissing in a bag, shitting in a bag, being very quiet, doing checks with higher every hour or so, making sure you're still there and then when the target comes into view, making sure you have a clean shot. Before you make your shot, notify everybody you're getting ready to do an exit, you're getting read to leave. Make the shot, call the ball and get the fuck out.

ESQ: But how were the IDs done?

ZEKE: If there's ground unit support in the area they'd go in and do the ID. Big Army would roll in and do the ground check, do the ID. But the guys who did the work: very seldom do you actually go with the guys doing the identification. Because you have to get to them. And that would blow your cover, blow your hive.

And then you wait for the intel to come back, saying you have a clean hit, the target has been eliminated. Fine. For the good. Next operation. Debriefs will take a couple of days and a lot of times you'll say we need a stand-down. Because those days of surveillance in a hive are exhausting. You're literally up 24-7. And you're nervous and you're scared, so you'll stand down for a couple of days. Sleep, work out, watch TV, play video games, play on the computer, clean your gear, clean your equipment, make sure it's serviceable, and then get on the phone and ask what's next. That's a standard day. Standard day.

ESQ: And those days roll on by.

ZEKE: Roll on by. It's really strange that once the operation is over you'll find that most guys don't even talk about the past operation. There's no conversation about it. Most of the conversation's about, when are you going to go home, what's your old lady doing. There's a sense of professionalism that everybody knows about. Everybody recognizes that you're a pro; we don't need to talk about the last golf ball shot; we just know how to shoot the thing, the golf ball. So it's kept on other things, and when the mission gets put it, and the order comes down, everybody focuses on it, locks on it, everybody starts focusing on their job, everybody starts doing their job. The biggest thing is, make sure your gear is serviceable, make sure everything works, make sure you have everything. Make sure your comms -- your communications -- are dead on.

ESQ: You told me you wanted to bring your own rifle to Iraq. How did that work out?

ZEKE: Well, that didn't work out. Getting things in and out of Iraq in a diplomatic pouch....It's your rifle, you test with it, you shoot with it. Even though they're manufactured and the company says 10 thousand they're all the same, every one is different.

Tinkers with it, yeah. Because I want it to work correctly. I want to know that when I put that shot down range, the shot's going to go where I aim it. That the zero -- that the minute of angle is correct. That the scope alignment is right. That the cheek weld is correct. That the trigger pull is to what I want. I know when that hammer is going to drop with the trigger pull because I've fired 300 rounds through it, 200 rounds through it, as opposed to a post rifle that's there at the post -- oh, by the way, we've got a 700, go use that. Well, that's cool, but it's not my rifle. I don't know it.

ESQ: What did you wind up using?

ZEKE: A post rifle. I got to know it decently. But it's not your rifle. It's used by every guy who comes through the station. So you don't know how it's been maintained, you don't know how the rifling in the barrel is, and bullets can go off an inch or a mile depending on how the barrel's cleaned out. How the scope is aligned, how it was taken care of. Has the scope been bumped around, was it dropped. I mean, you're talking about life or death, I want to know that rifle is going to [send the round where I want it to go?], that I'm not going to hit some civilian [who's not even an associate?] It's pretty critical.

ESQ: What you've described about being there is adrenaline. But what you've described to me sounds like the most deliberate process in the world. So where's the adrenaline in the deliberate process?

ZEKE: In the totality of what you're actually involved with. Not in the actual mechanics of it. Because when you're actually down behind the glass, down behind the sight, it's all business, and you're thinking, breath control. Finger control. Cheek weld. You're thinking target identification. Cross-hair alignment. Windage. Where's the wind blowing, okay? I feel the wind blowing on the back of my neck. Am I going to have to adjust? Grain of bullet. All those things are going through your mind, and then you focus on the target and you immediately take that person you're looking at through the scope and turn him into a paper silhouette. That's how you have to do it. He's walking around, holding a cup of coffee, he's smoking, moving, you see him talking to somebody, you're getting ready to put a piece of steel in this individual. And if you think about that as a guy with a family, kids and dreams and aspirations, you will never pull that four and a half pound trigger. You have to: okay, that's a silhouette, that's a really bad silhouette, a really bad individual, he's hurt friends of mine: Pop. That's how you have to do it. And then you have the adrenaline. Jeez! Because sometimes you don't even hear the round go off. Sometimes you just feel the recoil. Wham! You want that round to go off, a nice easy press. You don't want to snap the trigger. Wham! Spotter: he's down. He's clean. Let's go. You're wrapping your stuff up, you're rolling your gear up, you're stuffing rifles in a kit bag, you're moving. You're on the radio, Go, go, go!

ZEKE: Gone. You try to time it with vehicles going by. Noise. Sometimes you don't even hear the shot. This guy falls, and everybody who is sitting around gets up: the hell? That's the best of all words. Clean hit. Instant death. Guy's dead, the guy's gone. Everybody's looking around, vehicles are going all over the place, they don't know where you're at. You're moving. That's how you want to do it.

ESQ: All that with a post rifle?

ZEKE: Yeah. That's why you make the big bucks. [Laughs.] It's not as clean as you want, it's not as precise. You have that nagging thought in the back of your mind that this guy is going to suffer from this. Is he not dead? Did I give him a crippler? Did I paralyze him from the neck down? That's a horrible thought. If you're going to do this thing, you want him out of the planet, out of this world. No pain. Getting hit with a 700 Remington is like getting hit with a baseball going 500 miles an hour. It's not like, ooh, ouch. It's WHAM. You're done. And that's what you want. That's the humane thing to do. If there's any humanity in you at all. You're killing in cold blood and the humane thing to do, if you're going to do it, is to make sure you do it fast.

ESQ: You always hear, in armies, that there's a respect for the opponent. There's hatred, there's whatever, but at some level there's respect, that they're doing the same thing you're doing, they're soldiers. Can there be, is there, respect for the person in your sight?

ZEKE: No. Because it's not a solider per se. It's a guy in civilian clothes. It's a quote unquote terrorist. I don't even get that personal. I don't. My job is to put a hold in that target. I have to dehumanize my target. If I humanize that target, I'll never pull the trigger.... You kind of lose a bit of your humanity. Basically you are committing murder. You're committing a homicide. You're doing it in the calmest of situations. This guy does not even know you're out there. He's sitting in his chair and all of a sudden he gets shot, right through that glass. Never saw it coming. Never had a moment to think about it. WHAM. Lot of baggage. That's why snipers, per se, are not really liked well in other units. Guys don't like them around. They bring a bad vibe with them.

ESQ: You called yourself, when I first met you, a designated marksman. DM. You've called yourself a sniper, you've called yourself an operator. The word I've never heard you use is assassin. Well, once or twice. But not often. What's the world you apply to yourself.

ZEKE: Designated marksman. Assassin will bring up too much negative connotation in my own mind about who I am. A professional, designated marksman is a tool. An assassin is a mental way of life. I'm a professional. I'm not a guy who wakes up in the morning and decides to shoot people. I've spent years perfecting my craft, years learning how to do what I do. An assassin is, I feel, an opportunist. Someone who decides one day that he's going to do this.... I couldn't think of myself as that. That would be too hard. It's hard enough living with what I'm living with now. As you can see. I'm a designated marksman, a designated, registered sharpshooter. That's what I do. Whether it's paper targets or people or whatever. I have no emotional involvement with them.

ESQ: So it's imperative that someone else gives the order.

ZEKE: Absolutely. It insulates you emotionally. I don't have the educational experience, I'm not in a position of power. This is just where I landed. There's a lot of us. Tools. Guys with far, far superior skills in Iraq. There are guys who are absolutely phenomenal with a rifle. Thousand yard shots. Absolute pinpoint accuracy. Just unbelievable, just magical ability. They're out there right now. Doing it. Right now. Today.

ESQ: Do you know the strategic goal, when you go out on an operation?

ZEKE: No. I have to focus on what I'm after. I've got to focus on getting from Point A to Point B safely.

ESQ: Would big-picture knowledge make living with it easier?

ZEKE: No. Harder. And it would make me less effective. It would scatter my concentration. You have to really be intensely focused on one thing. And if you ask anybody, a tennis player or someone, they'll say you have to focus on one thing. That intensity. You're in the zone. And you're in the zone. You're not focused on anything else. That's probably where the real immorality comes in. You don't really care. Right or wrong, you've committed yourself. Again, you've pushed through that moral firewall. You're going to do this.

ESQ: You've made a decision in advance.

ZEKE: Regardless of whether the guy's taking a crap or drinking a cup of coffee or having a smoke. He could look at you throw that scope, 300 yards away, 100 yards away, and plead with you silently, not to kill him, and you'd still -- POW! It's a hard thing. And so, to answer your question, you probably have an intuition of what the big picture is, this is probably someone who, if still allowed to function like he was functioning, would probably cost lives. That's all. That's the justification. He's carrying a weapon, I think he's carrying a weapon, his spotter's carrying a weapon -- there's an AK47 close by. That helps with the justification.

ESQ: The number that you first gave me, when we first met in Houston, were thirty-seven Qaeda, twenty-one Baathists.

ZEKE: Close. That's close. That's nothing to -- you don't want to keep count, because you think somehow the gods are keeping score on you. Just rather not talk about it. A lot of it's bullshit, bravado. But close. Sometimes you get carried away with your self-importance. But you gotta tell somebody. Gotta be known for something. Oh boy.

ESQ: You said last night that you've never talked about it with anybody.

ZEKE: No.

ESQ: Now that you have, does it feel better or worse?

ZEKE: It's dredging up old stuff. I don't want to be perceived as something I'm not. I'm a nobody and I don't want to be considered anything. There are guys far more qualified to do what I do. Real operators. I don't want my life turned on me. I really don't. I've probably got an interesting story, but I don't want to be promoted to be something that I'm not. I want to stay humble. Too many guys making profits off books. I don't want to be known as this super-shooter. I'm not that. Absolutely not. I've gone into this business grudgingly. Look at me now.

ESQ: Well, I think: grudgingly yeah and grudgingly no. I've seen two side. The side that wants to get out and the side that wants to stay in. And they're at war.

ESQ: The kind of operations that you do are essentially always done by contractors, right?

ZEKE: Yeah, no American military involved. But these operations are conducted by people who are a little older than 18-year-old soldiers. We're talking thirty-five, forty, fifty, or sixty. They've been around longer. They've got training. They've been exposed to operations. They've got clearances.

ESQ: Is it legal?

ZEKE: No, probably not. I don't know. Probably not.

ESQ: And you have a Q clearance?

ZEKE: DOE Q clearance. And a TS/SCI, Top Secret Secure Information Clearance. You have to have a DOE Q clearance to be around nuclear weapons.

ESQ: If all was forgiven, and Larry wanted to dispatch you, do you think that you'd go back to Iraq, or some place else?

ZEKE: I'd request to go some place else. I don't want to go back to the Middle East.

ESQ: But that's where they need people.

ZEKE: I know, but my mental state now is that I'm not good for much. I'd get myself or somebody hurt. I might take a chance just to get rid of some pain, and get not only myself killed, but somebody else with me killed. I don't know what lies ahead of me. I really don't. I'm hoping something good, but it's been a sucky last couple of years. Got to get better. Got to get better. [Long pause.] This would make a great movie, wouldn't it?

ESQ: Now you were in Iraq in 2004 when four Blackwater contractors were hung from the bridge in Fallujah. How did that affect people?

ZEKE: Really badly. Just knocked the wind out of everybody's sails. It really pissed everybody off. And atrocities went up because of it. There was an incident right after that happened where the Marines went in, back to Fallujah, and stacked 'em up because of that. Stacked 'em up like cordwood. And that's never going to make the press. Maybe ten years from now that will come out.

ESQ: I looked at this stuff that you first told me back in Houston. You said that the thing about Iraq is that it got really tribal really fast.

ZEKE: Really fast. Within a week's time it changed. It changed from clinical, surgical special operations to Black Ops stuff, to we're going to kill as many motherfuckers as possible.

ESQ: When you were in Afghanistan, were you with the Karzai detail? Or doing the same kind of...

ZEKE: Overwatch.

ESQ: Who'd you work for? Who was your contract through?

ZEKE: Well, Blackwater was the contractor. There were literally hundreds of details going in there doing different things. Guys were instructing, some guys were doing PSD—personal protection—some guys were doing covert actions. All kinds of alleyways and hallways and avenues where guys were going -- and all on the dark side. What "black" means is that there is no Congressional oversight for expenditure. Money goes into a black hole and then they don't know where the money is spent. And using people who have different identities, who are covered identities, who have no paper trail back to where they were at. That's what black means. Black op.

ESQ: There are some Congress people who are aware of these things?

ZEKE: Probably a few.

ESQ: Intelligence committee?

ZEKE: Maybe. Some of them. Not a lot of them. Again, a lot of those actions probably transgress international law or even domestic law. That's when they'll say, Don't tell me about this operation. I don't want to know about it.

ESQ: That was something listening to that conversation with Larry this morning. I'm not going to be able to get that out of my mind for a long time.

ZEKE: Why's that? What struck you about it?

ESQ: Because it was fucking real. I've heard about your handler, and this and that -- it's not like I didn't believe it, but at the same time, when something is real in front of your face, when you're telling the guy, Thanks for the kick in the balls....

ZEKE: One of my downfalls is plain speaking to these people. It's bitten me in the ass.

ESQ: Do you like this guy? Your handler?

ZEKE: No. Respect him. I don't like him.

ESQ: You told me once that you had a woman before.

ZEKE: Yeah, a female. She was nice. She was a bureaucrat, a very lonely lady. Divorced. CIA operator. Cut her teeth in the NSA. Went over and changed houses in the CIA. Became a foreign service coordinator. I think she was in Beirut for a while. Spoke like six languages and all that stuff. Sexually frustrated to the Nth degree. She always peppered that kind of thing into our conversations, which made me extremely uncomfortable because I didn't trust her. But she treated me well. She gave me space. Very demanding. Very detailed, which I liked. Which I don't have with Larry. Larry was the kind of guy like, "I need you on the plane tomorrow." Where am I going? "East. Get your ticket at United Airlines." Where am I staying? "I'll call you on the way." With the other one, it was like, "You're going to the Singapore Ramada, you're in Room 228, it's been swept, your contact is here, your pick-up weapon is there." I knew in advance where I was going. With Larry, I didn't know from day one... "I need you in DC tomorrow." Okay. What time? "Be here around 1:30."

ESQ: When you were working, how often were you working?

ZEKE: All the time. I was gone four-and-a-half months to six months a year. I was gone all the time. That's where all the money came from. I was paid well. Lots of living in airplanes and hotels, and shit hole foreign countries. I lived the job. Boom, Boom, Boom, Boom, Boom. I was a good tool, I was used well. Never turned it down. Phone rang, gone. That's why this is so frustrating, 'cause I don't have that anymore. My phone doesn't ring that much anymore. As you can see, I have three cell phones, they don't ring. The only person that calls me is Terri. Horrible, man. It's the only thing I got to stay alive.

ESQ: But you make good money at the plant....

ZEKE: Yeah, I do. I do alright. Keeps groceries, makes my car payment. Not much left over though. Probably good for me. But I miss the life. I miss the ease of travel. I miss it. But I got to grow up some time I guess... Hey, I'm gonna put a pizza in, you want a pizza?

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